Recovering Gambler | I Turned $200 Into $100,000 Then Lost It All

Nothing’s Off the Table with Louis Ruggiero

Uri Edell shares his harrowing journey from a high-stakes sports bettor to a person in recovery from gambling addiction. He details the prog

Key takeaways

• Uri turned $200 into nearly $100,000 at a blackjack table but lost it all within an hour due to chasing losses.
• The accessibility of mobile betting apps significantly escalated his addiction compared to traditional physical casinos.

Main topics

• Progression of gambling addiction
• Impact of mobile betting technology

Notable quotes

There is no winning in gambling at all. You will lose everything.

Conclusion

A powerful testament to the possibility of recovery through radical ho

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:05) Welcome back. Another episode. Nothing's off the table. We got a gambler in the house. Yeah. Uri Adele. Yes, sir. Okay. Speaker 2 (0:17) Gambler who's now in recovery welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. We love Speaker 1 (0:22) the gamblers here, man We love Speaker 2 (0:23) the gamblers here. We need more of them We need more gamblers to come on and share their experience strength and hope we need people to know that you can recover from this Break the stigma we were just talking about this offline when we were like it's more acceptable in society to be like a heroin addict than it is a gambling addict when in Reality, they're literally the same thing. Absolutely Speaker 2 (0:47) You also went through right choice recovery who I did is my sponsor for the podcast. They're the best and we love Rob We love right choice. We'll get to them and hear about your process there, but bro, we don't uh, You know tiptoe Get right to it. Let's do it. Say it every episode. Yeah, you ready? I'm ready All right. Tell us about your last day gambling my Speaker 1 (1:07) last day gambling. I love that question My last day gambling was actually an interesting one because I had already come clean about my gambling addiction to my wife, to my family. We already made the decision that I was going to go to rehab, right? So it was like a Wednesday night and I was going to rehab Sunday. So flew down to Florida with my brothers. They were escorting me to rehab, but they just wanted a guy's trip to Florida. And in Florida, I didn't have access to like the online apps. It wasn't legal there. So I just remember the day I was going into rehab. just sending hundreds of screenshots of parlays to my buddy in Jersey to have them placed in for me. In my head, I was like, this is my last chance to win something at this before I sign off for good. You know, let me send all these hockey parlays, football parlays, whatever was going on at the time, send it to my buddy in Jersey to place them for me, Venmo'd him. And that's what I would do whenever I would travel. I would just screenshot parlays that I wanted and I would send it to like a whole network of friends that I had in Jersey to just place those bets for me. So that was probably the last, that's the last. last day that I gambled. It was March 30th, 2025. Speaker 2 (2:14) Then you didn't start gambling and say oh, you know what? I can't wait till I become a compulsive gambler. No one does that. How did it all start? Speaker 1 (2:22) About the progression here with the progression. Yeah, so I grew up in Toronto in Canada and Gambling is actually legal there. It was legal there way before anywhere else. You can go to the convenience store They have this thing called pro line and you could bet sports parlay sports bets and you could do it legally at the convenience stores there You have to be a certain age, which we weren't. So I remember in high school, you know, my first ever time going, we took our janitor from high school, kind of told him to get in the car. We're going to the convenience store, me and my friends. I remember sitting in that convenience store placing, you know, my first ever sports parlay. It was a six game hockey parlay. Speaker 1 (3:03) And coming home, watching the games and hitting my first ever parlay. And that to me at the time was like the most exciting thing ever, right? I got to go to school the next day, show all these older kids, like, look at this legend, just won a few thousand bucks on a hockey parlay. So to me, this is like the greatest thing ever. It's the easiest thing to do. You know, it turns out that was like my death sentence because that was that first initial rush of dopamine, that first initial, you know, experience with this. And it was a great one. And that's what set me down the path, man. It was, you know, from there, it was just nonstop. You know, I think it progressed, right? So through high school, I would continue to do that every day, every weekend, taking our janitor to the convenience store, having him place all of our tickets for us, joining all the pools, hockey pools, fantasy pools, March Madness pools. You know, I was absolutely hooked pretty much right off the bat. you know i didn't do drugs i didn't drink in high school like this was my thing and that's how i justified it like this is this is okay nothing's wrong with it it's legal um so in high school you know i would say i did it quite frequently i had some really big wins that you know set the stage for me um and then it just got worse from there you know after after high school i moved to israel for a couple years and in my head this was the end of my gambling career like i'm not gonna gamble in israel Speaker 1 (4:22) Turns out I find this mall right near where I was staying and there was a kiosk in the mall where you could bet on Israeli basketball, all these Israeli sports that I knew nothing about. And then I became a whiz kid in Israeli basketball and you could bet on NFL there also. So same thing, betting parlays because I was a strict parlay guy. I never did straight bets. It was never enough for me. I had to have like a crazy six to eight teamer for it to do anything. And there's... being able to have these crazy hits on, you know, and showing all my friends in Israel, the same thing, right? It's trying to be that big shot. Like, look at me, like what I was, you know, I'm this expert. I'm this whiz kid who could pick an 18 parlay and win. Um, so that's, you know, my sports betting kind of evolved to, I can tell you about my first casino experience when I was in Israel. Please. That was actually a pretty crazy story. Um, we Speaker 2 (5:12) want to hear about it all. Speaker 1 (5:13) Yeah. So I'm still sports betting now. I'm in Israel now. I'm about 16, 17 years old. And friends of ours took a trip to the southern tip of Israel to call this place called Eilat. It's a beautiful, it's probably like the Las Vegas of Israel. Beautiful place, beautiful hotels. And I remember my friend telling me then there's a casino in Egypt on the other side of the border. It's the Hilton Taba Hotel. They had a casino there. And we decided that we were going to walk over the border. As a 16-year-old kid, we're going to walk over the border into Egypt. We're going to walk to this Hilton and we're going to go to the casino. So it was 1 o'clock in the morning. We're walking over the border. There are passports. We pass these armed guards, armed Egyptian guards, right? I'm telling myself, what am I doing? Where am I? And we walk to this like oasis, this gorgeous hotel, the Hilton Hotel in Taba in the Sinai Desert in Egypt. Speaker 1 (6:09) Walking to the casino for the first time was just the most intoxicating experience, right? The smoke, the slot machines, the chips. It was just incredible, incredible feeling. I remember sitting there with everyone from all walks of life in that casino, right? All the different cultures, underage kids who did the same thing we did. Sat there for about two or three hours, and I was loving every second of it. My friend lost all his money pretty quick, so he was ready to go, and I would have stayed for hours. So begrudgingly, I'm like, all right, let's cash out, you know, or am I kidding? Cash out. Whatever I had left probably, you know, last hand. And then we left. We walked back, walked back over the border, walked back into Israel, went back to our hotel, woke up the next morning to the news that that exact casino had a suicide bomber that came into the hotel right after we had left and blew up the casino. Speaker 2 (7:00) Oh, my God. And Speaker 1 (7:01) like 20 people died. And in my head, I remember thinking like, that's. It's probably a sign from God not to do this anymore. You know, like, can you imagine my parents having to hear that news that I, that I died in a suicide bombing in Egypt? Like I'm supposed to be in Israel with my friends. So that was my first ever casino experience. And you would think that would have stopped me. But, you know, once I got that feeling, that intoxicating feeling of being in the casino, you know, it's all I wanted. So. Yeah, it was after coming back from Israel. I went to New York. You know, I did I was in University in New York for a few years and You might be a little younger than me. But at the time there was no legal casinos here It was all poker clubs right in New York City. So I frequent to the poker clubs quite a bit Right and similar story that happened there, you know, there was this poker club. I believe was called straddle we would go and Go into this random building, you know, walk up the stairs. There's armed bouncers there. They let you in. And then you're in essentially a casino in some random apartment in New York City, right? Six, seven poker tables, dealers, TVs everywhere, smoke. It was a great environment. It was a lot of fun. And I did that numerous times where, you know, I remember having one incredible night there where I won like $10,000 and feeling like a king, like a college kid who was in this casino, won all this money. Speaker 1 (8:22) And the next night after I won that money, I was debating if I should go back or not. I decided not to. For whatever reason and that night, you know, these three armed gunmen went into that club and shot it up So like there were this is near-death experiences that I had like at the casino Which was like in my head signs that I should have listened to to stop what I was doing But you know as you know, once you get a taste of this you can't stop. Yeah So, you know that was college Still sports betting still doing parlays non-stop literally every night action on every game right for me. It was like It wasn't so much because I was putting 30, 40 bucks on a parlay with six, seven teams to win a few thousand. I would do like 10 of those. So, you know, it was only a couple hundred bucks at the time. I justified it and I would win every so often. So in my head, I'm always up, you know. So, yeah, that's kind of where it started, you know, and then where it got to. Then I got married. You know, we moved to Jersey. I was still doing the one better. you know, website with bookies, still doing parlays. But for me, you know, I think where it all changed is when everything got legalized, right? Like I would still go to the casino, to Atlantic City, but it wasn't like I needed to go every single day. It was like the odd trip every few months. And when I would go, I would go pretty hard. But when the access became like on your phone 24-7, that's when everything went into a new stratosphere for me. Speaker 2 (9:49) Take me through a day in the life of a degenerate gambler. Speaker 2 (9:56) Everyone's answer for this, I ask every compulsive gambler the same question. Yeah, so. Everyone's answer is different, which is why I ask it. Real quick, you guys know my story. I was suicidal with a 10-month-old child at home and nearly a million dollars in debt. Want to know the one thing I learned the hard way? Gambling addiction is not the same as drug or alcohol addiction. You can't just throw a gambler into a regular rehab and replace the word alcohol or drugs with gambling. That's why I partnered with Algamus. They're the oldest privately funded gambling specific inpatient treatment center in the country. They've been doing this and only this for over 30 years. It's a real home out in Arizona. It's a small program. And the majority of the staff there are also in recovery from gambling. They get it. If you're where I was, or you love somebody who is, call 1-888-NO-WAGER. That's 1-888- Speaker 2 (10:48) 669-2437. One call is all it takes to start your journey in recovery. So for me, let's Speaker 1 (10:54) say Speaker 2 (10:54) I'm fast forwarding to Speaker 1 (10:54) like the worst of the times, right? When I Speaker 2 (10:56) was Speaker 1 (10:56) like really in it, it would be not really waking up because I spent all night gambling. So I wasn't really waking up in the morning because, you know, I'm spinning slots or I'm playing blackjack or I'm doing everything on my phone throughout the entire night. But. At some point, I had to get out of bed to get ready for work. So I remember I would take my phone to the bathroom. That's another hour of spinning slots in the bathroom. Take a shower, put my phone up on the shower wall because I couldn't go a second without this. I would auto spin while I was showering because that could have been the time where I hit a massive spin so I can't miss out. So in the shower gambling, see the kids off to school, get in the car, drive to work. Phone in my lap, gambling while I'm driving. And with me, I work in New York. I live in New Jersey. The casino is only legal in New Jersey. So as I'm driving to work, I knew exactly on the highway where the New York state border was and where this game would stop playing. I would pull over in the shoulder and tell myself a few more minutes of this game before you have to get to work. And I'd be sitting there for hours, just spinning slots, placing bets, could not stop. right? And then at some point, I finally had to just go, whether I lost all my money or whatever it was, get to work. It's still consuming every single moment of my thoughts, even when I'm not gambling. It's still- What were you doing for work? I work at a biotech company. I do marketing, business development. So it's a pretty high pressure job. It's really involved. And I had to meet with a lot of people throughout the day. So I try to compartmentalize, like, okay, it's work time now. Got to put this away. But in my head, all I could think of is- that night's slate of games or how I'm going to get my next source of funds or when I could